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Two more covid19 related deaths were reported on Saturday, bringing the total in TT to 171. This makes it 14 deaths since April 23.
According to the Ministry of Health’s 4 pm update, there were also 248 new cases of covid19, taking the nine-day count to 1,689, and the total to 11,072.
The number of active cases was 2,355 with 201 in hospital, 236 in quarantine facilities, 1,884 in home isolation and 22 at step-down facilities.
The number of recovered patients increased by 65 to 8,546.
At the ministry’s virtual press conference on Saturday morning, epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds noted that the number of new cases in 2021 met and surpassed those at the peak of cases in 2020. The seven-day rolling average is also increasing.
“At this point the positivity (the percentage positive out of every 100 samples) is about 27 per cent. We are seeing it continually increasing. It’s been increasing since week ten. This indicates that there are higher levels of viral prevalence in the population. We are seeing that reflected in the proportion of people testing positive for coronavirus when they present with respiratory illness or when they present after having been identified as a contact.”
Remaining relatively consistent are the ratios of male to female and ages of people contracting the virus, as well as the morbidity statistics.
He said 55.5 per cent of the people who got the virus were in the 25 to 49 age range, and 52 per cent of those who contracted it were male and 48 per cent female. With regard to fatalities, 72.2 per cent who died were male, and 27.8 per cent female. Eighty per cent of fatalities had one or more comorbidities.
He noted an overall upward trend of new cases in each county since the beginning of the year with counties with bigger populations having higher numbers of cases.
“The demonstration of this is really just to remind everyone that, at this point, with basically widespread community transmission, at any point, in any part of the country, you are expected to be following all of the guidelines with respect to reducing your risk because the risk is widespread.”
There is also the threat of the Brazilian variant of covid 19 (P1) which has been detected in TT. On Friday, a release from the ministry stated that there were six additional cases of P1. One was a non-national from the Nariva/Mayaro county who was the primary contact of another P1 case. The other five were nationals from the St George West, and one of the cases was a primary contact of another P1 case.
This brings the local number of confirmed covid19 samples of the P1 variant to 15.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram said between 280 to 300 positive samples were tested for P1.
The two cases of the UK variant came from repatriated people.
“Those persons would have been quarantined, isolated for the entire duration of time, some of them actually having to stay as long as 33 days in isolation before we would have deemed they were no longer infectious.”
He added that the ministry consulted experts on genetics and immunology from the University of the West Indies to learn as much as possible about the different types of variants.
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